Thursday, 21 January 2016

Racing Car Show 1966: MiniSprint

We can hop from one stand to another: yesterday's Landar R6 could (under covers) be seen on the Broadspeed GT picture of Tuesday; today's MiniSprint was spotted by eagle-eyed reader Pete Flanagan yesterday! Indeed, a peak of the car on stand 45 - located next to that of Broadspeed and Landar - could be seen. This stand was run by the GT Equipment Company, although the brochure mentions Gran Turismo Wheels as the entrant. Anyway: they were selling sporty motoring accessories here, again, from wooden steering wheels to 'John Surtees driving gloves'. And the MiniSprint must have come in last minute, only to be unveiled right here - 50 years ago. The picture below is the only one that I know of of the car on display there You can just see the 'RRW1' registration - this is Rob Walker's personal car as seen in the brochure and in several magazine reports, too. Who has more pictures?

The GT Equipment stand must have squeezed the MiniSprint in at the last minute

Picture courtesy Autocar magazine

The brochures may not yet have been printed - this flyer was handed out on stand 45

Picture Jeroen Booij archive

That's Rob Walker with his Sprint in front of his infamous Corsley Garage

Picture Jeroen Booij archive

And here goes to show the considerable size reduction of the Sprint

Picture Jeroen Booij archive

This ad was printed in the Racing Car Show program booklet, showing one of the first Sprints built

Picture Jeroen Booij archive

And the same car (edit: not the same - see Pete's comment below) making its entry at the Maximum Mini/Mk1 Performance Track day in 2014

3 comments:

Hi Jeroen, the two VPRs were two different cars. The white car is the real one that Stirling Moss thrashed around Brands for he press (think he was driving for RW at the time) and the other one had the plates put on it just for that photo shoot. I managed to reunite Stirling with the car in 2014 at Shelsley Walsh. :-) Pete F

Geoff Thomas did confirm that for me some time ago and said it was occasional practice to move the plates from car to car for the press if they wanted to shoot a car on the road. RRW1 was a different car again as you know that Rob often drove to the circuits in and even that number plate ended up on all sorts of other Rob Walker cars but also including on Corlsey manager David Jolliffe's racing Cooper S. A pal of mine saw RRW1 on a Ferrari only recently! Pete